INTERNATIONAL AIR BAHAMA CREW FRIENDSHIP REUNION WEBSITE
Georgette, Betty and Leo arranged a fantastic Air Bahama 40 year
celebration dinner at the Hotel Italia in Luxembourg!

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TOM BRANDENBURGER

Hotel Italia
Saturday September 6, 2008
Air Bahama 40 year anniversary
Once more, I must say that it has been a
wonderful evening there in Hotel Italia,
and Lilian, Elisa and I will certainly
remember this for a long time. Also, I
would like to express my gratitude to all
of the good people that made this event
happen!
I wonder if there are many other companies
in the world that are able to evoke such
strong feelings and memories in so many
people, after so many years, as Air Bahama
still does today?
Air Bahama was mainly known to the regular
Luxembourgian by this beautifully painted
DC-8-63 aircraft he could see flying over
the city every day. Moreover, a huge poster,
displaying a sun-tanned girl at a Bahamian
beach, in the window of our “Town office”,
arose much public attention - you could
already spot it when coming out of the train
station across the street.
With its shining white and red colours and
the sun on its tail, the Air Bahama airplane
seemed to bring along a small part of the
Caribbean Sea to this cool and rainy Central
Europe. It was so much different from all the
other, regular, airliners you could see, and
it was by far the most beautiful aircraft
around. In fact, I haven’t seen anything
like it after it was gone.
Remarkably, the heydays of International Air
Bahama and Loftleidir Icelandic Airlines at
the beginning of the 1970s were, at the same
time, the heydays of Luxembourg airport. It
was a time, when it seemed that this makeshift
looking “ Luxembourg Departure and Arrival hall”
would soon burst into pieces, with all those
large aircraft bringing tons of folks from the
US and the Bahamas over here. Hundreds of
Hippies streamed in and out, and when left
behind, because of overfilled flights, they
simply arranged for an overnight in their
sleeping bags outside on the grass around the
facilities. The low airfares of Loftleidir
Icelandic Airlines produced a sort of over-
production, resulting in full flights and stiff
over-bookings, sometimes forcing the company to
throw in extra flights to evacuate the massive
number of standby passengers.
All this, in conjunction with long delays “due
to technical”, sometimes made for unheard-of
situations, funny and not so funny, that would
probably fill a whole book.
Sadly, once Air Bahama, and later on, Icelandic
Airlines, stopped operating to Luxembourg, we
were left like a dog without a bone, and until
today, without any flights to the USA, let alone
to the Caribbean Sea.
Also, and even more sadly, the somewhat special
and romantic aspect of aviation of that time has
vanished today, and flying became a non-personal
and strictly cost-effective mass carriage.
When I talk to younger colleagues today about Air
Bahama and Loftleidir Icelandic Airlines, it
appears that most of them haven’t even heard these
names, and some cannot believe that all this was
going on in tiny Luxembourg more than 35 years ago.
But then again, they might not even know who Jimi
Hendrix was ...
Long gone the days when an elegant, shiny red and
white DC-8 came thundering across the sky over
Luxembourg, on it’s way down to the Bahamas. But
very comforting the fact, that there are so many,
that still remember those glorious days, and that
manifest this strongly by meeting and having a good
time together.
Keep it up, Air Bahama, and let’s all be
“Eleutheran Adventurers”!
See you all soon!
Tom Brandenburger
Luxembourg